But Why Tho?

This week, Alex, Charles, and Swara talk about what happens when genres reach maturity, what's become of superhero movies, and what they would do to fix the genre's problems if they were in charge.

The Nakba, or "catastrophe" in Arabic, describing the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestine by Israel since 1948, is not widely learned. Rasheed Abueideh, a Palestinian game designer based in the West Bank, aims to change that with his new game in development, Dreams on a Pillow. Here is our interview with Abueideh, in which he explains why he decided to pursue making the game, w...

We sat down with Lead Vision Designer Mark Rosewater to discuss the design behind Magic: The Gathering's latest Universe's Beyond set, Marvel Super Heroes. From color choices to theme to navigating canon, Mark has insight on it all.

As one of Obsidian's most successful titles, Grounded 2 's most recent Beat the Heat update keeps pushing the little game that could into a model for multiplayer play in 2026. During Summer Game Fest Play Days, we spoke with Chris Parker, the Game Director on Grounded 2, about introducing new fixtures like buggies and the King Dozer, and how the studio has looked to build its franchise with player...

Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) introduced a new seasonal model this year, and with seasons, the Bethesda-published MMORPG is rolling out the most substantial sequential updates the game has released since launch. During Summer Game Fest Play Days, we spoke with ZeniMax Online Studios ' developers Nick Giacomini (Game Director) and Jason Barnes (Associate Design Director) about everything we'll see thi...

This week, Alex is joined by Katherine and Ryan to talk about the massive amount of gaming news that's come out in the past week. They talk about Summer Games Fest, PlayStation's State of Play, and Xbox Games Showcase, and all of what's exciting and worrying them from it. This episode was recorded before this week's Nintendo Direct, so we'll discuss that news in next week's episode.

This week, Alex, Charles, and Swara discuss storytelling, when happy endings can be bad but sad or challenging endings be good, and what happens to stories when they prioritize the wrong things.

Directive 8020 gives space horror fans the first real taste of the genre since Dead Space’s homage to Event Horizon. The game wields space horror to great effect, letting the story and characters carry it. We sat down with Directive 8020’s Creative Director, Will Doyle, to discuss the game’s inspirations, Supermassive Games’ approach to storytelling in the Dark Pictures Anthology series, and how t...

This week, Alex, Kate, and Matt talk about how basically everything on the internet now is either paid advertising that's inflating how much people care about a thing, or exploitative free advertising at the expense of actual marketing professionals and campaigns. It's all bad and makes products worse while making it impossible to believe that anything online is even real anymore. Plus, how AI is...

This week, Alex and Kyle discuss the recent trend of physical media's seeming rising popularity. They discuss why they think people are moving towards a more analog, inconvenient age, the terrors of tech companies owning your digital content, and where community is and isn't being built around physical media purchasing and collecting.

This week, Alex and Kyle finally talk about Dropout, the College Humor streaming platform known for great comedy, passionate (parasocial) fans, and generally good-natured and kindhearted wholesomenss.

During MagicCon Las Vegas, we spoke with the team behind bringing The Hobbit to Magic: The Gathering's Universes Beyond. We discuss the importance of honoring Tolkien's legacy and how The Hobbit differs from the Tales from Middle-earth Lord of the Rings set. Wizards of the Coast: Mike Turian- Senior Executive Producer Annie Sardelis - Principal Game Designer Nick Marcantel - Senior Narrative Desig...

This week, we have a very special episode covering everything announced at Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest in Anaheim. We discuss what we know about the new Evercold expansion and the massive amounts of updates coming to the game in Patch 8.0

This week, Alex and Jason talk about The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, whether it's "bad for kids," if characters need to grow or develop for stories to be good, and why we mix up nostalgia for quality.

This week, Alex, Kate, and Matt talk about the conspiracy theory that the CIA intentionally killed rock music to supress it's anti-governmnet, anti-war, protest nature. They get into the dearth of new political music, why it's hard to find it when it does come out, and why the long history of protest music seems to have died alongside rock music.

Prove You’re Human is a sci-fi narrative adventure game from Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客, the visionary studio behind the Peabody award-winning 1000xRESIST . What's even more exciting is that Prove You're Human is the debut title for new developer-turned-publisher, Black Tabby Publishing. Yup, the developers who brought you the genre-smashing Slay the Princess are in publishing now. We sat down with B...

This week, Alex, Charles, and Neysha take a break from the tougher convos and share their biggest recommendations at the moment, including Trigun Stargaze, live-action One Piece Season 2, and Thundersong by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe.

This week, Alex, Matt, and Jason work through a sci-fi bracket in honor of the Artemis II launch and Project Hail Mary being a 10/10 movie. They debate how cool E.T. can be if he never curses like R2D2 does, whether a Star Trek replicator would shoot an avatar out like a compressed mattress, and if, from a post-modernist approach, it was actually always inevitable that the Fast and Furious movies...

This week, Alex, Kyle, and Charles discuss photorealism in video games, whether and when it has its place, and whatever is going on with Nvidia's DLSS 5 as AI slop takes over all of our art.

This week, Alex, Kate, and Matt discuss conventions, how their locations have made them more and more inaccessible, unaffordable, and worse, and why more conventions need to be held in more geographically diverse locations (especially the South).

This week, Alex talks to the team at Wizards of the Coast behind Magic: The Gathering's new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Universes Beyond Set: Eric Engelhard – Senior Game Designer and Set Design Lead, Stephanie Chung – Art Director, and Crystal Frazier – Senior Narrative Game Designer and Worldbuilding Lead. They take a deep dive into the set, from how the art style was decided on, how the set bo...

This week, Alex and Kate talk about how to be good people and neighbors in an age of constant horrors, war, and disappearings. They draw from the examples of Mr. Rogers, Ms. Rachel, the people of Minneapolis, and our own staff to try and find hope and action in dark times.

This week, Alex, Kate, Sarah, and Allyson talk about the Netflix documentary series, Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model. They discuss the docuseries, the toxicity inherent in America's Next Top Model, and how watching it impacted them, including eating disorders, on-screen representation, and much more.

This week, Alex and Kate talk about the rise of performative consumerism as a form of moralization and how it manifests from Tumblr to Bad Bunny's halftime show. Plus a reminder about some of the politics of some of the most misunderstood musicians. We aren't just the things we consume; go be a community!

This week, Alex, Jason, and Kyle discuss the Muppets, their legacy and impact, what iterations of the Muppets have worked and why, and of course, how they'd like to see the Muppets used in the future.